Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Oded Fehr

Director: Russell Mulcahy

Screenplay: Paul W S Anderson

Running time: 1 hr 35 mins

Genre: Action


REVIEW:


Like any other threequel, it’s pretentious, lacklustre, and dumbed down to plot-holes, squeezing what’s left of the juice. And like its undead creatures, RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION might as well walk the road to hell and nobody would care it ever exist. If you want to watch an ultra-powered Milla Jovovich in straps and leathers kicking zombified-arses, it will be a cheery Friday night, just remember to leave your brains at your door or you might find your eyebrows start flying away from your forehead due to wild, extreme disbelief.


The third (and hopefully the last) instalment in the video-game adaptation franchise has a massive hole at its epicentre: its plot. It’s almost a spooky thought, like any movie of the zombie genre, it tackles end-of-world, Apocalypse-like panorama, and almost all of the world’s population were turned into George Romero’s human-lusty creatures of the night, and in this case, also of the day. At least it could be proud of its T-virus infected zombies, compared to I AM LEGEND’s laughably CG-fied “dark seekers”, but wiping out the whole of the Earth, drying up everything including rivers and streams and lakes and everything watery into vast barren wastelands because of one virus so-called “T”. If this is not the prototype of exaggerated cinema-making, then I don’t know where I’ve left my brain for the past few hours. How in the hell could the whole world turn into deserts because of a virus infection? And why would any other part of the planet would look like Las Vegas? Why are the roads not covered with sand? And why does Japan still look like Japan at the end when at the start, we’re informed about “barren landscape”? Some films are truly thought-provoking, thank you very much.


Good fights are still present and set pieces are sprawling, but tedious storytelling is rolling like sandstorm. From the first reel, as we hear Jovovich’s narration (sounding as though she’s narrating a high-school stage play with glee), to the less conceived underground laboratory in the desert (reducing camera shots to digitalised screening, where’s the budget?), to the rip-off from Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (except that they’re zombie ravens), and to the most utterly ridiculous, Alice transforming into a psycho-kinetic super-human heroine who could control forces around her. I mean – whoah! I just wish I could modify my genes, mate! Kudos to model-actress Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter (pretty gal from HEROES) for bringing edgy girl-to-girl hotness power on the film, but they’ll just have to try harder.


VERDICT:


Third time turns out to be no charm at all. Enough with silly, money-cashing attempts, you cows! This dare proves that RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION might well be extinct after all, although this one doesn’t need saving.



RATING: C